


Dream's Edge

by SomeBratInAMask



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Canon Temporary Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief, Mostly canon compliant — some details shifted, Pre-Slash, jaydick_flashfic, jaydick_flashfic: atonement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 11:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17980439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeBratInAMask/pseuds/SomeBratInAMask
Summary: But Dick didn’t know at the time that his job was more than playing bait and doing high-kicks. It was to mollify Bruce, keep him grounded. Human. Remind him of how fragile life is, how careful he has to be to walk his line. And Jason — brave, bold, invincible Jason — wasn’t up for that task. He shouldn’t have had to be at fifteen, young enough to think he’ll live forever and strong enough to fool Bruce.A timeline in snapshots of Dick processing Jason's death.





	Dream's Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Update 6.27.19: I changed the title because that is within my power, and also I read Margaret Atwood's "Corpse Edge" which had some very pretty words that ache with Jason Todd and his relationship with Dick (and Bruce and in some ways Tim). It's a tad lengthy for this format, though, so here's just the end -
> 
>  
> 
> (I did not become  
> a tree or a constellation
> 
> (I became a winter coat the children  
> thought they saw on the street corner
> 
> (I became this illusion,  
> this trick of ventriloquism
> 
> this blind noun, this bandage  
> crumpled at your dream’s edge
> 
> or you will drift as I do  
> from head to head
> 
> swollen with words you never said,  
> swollen with hoarded love.
> 
> I exist in two places,  
> here and where you are.
> 
> Pray for me  
> not as I am but as I am.

Dick stumbles into his room at 3am to one new message on his answering machine. The number is Bruce’s personal. Dick presses  _ play  _ like ripping off a bandaid, stripping off his Nightwing suit as he moves towards his closetspace. He’s already rehearsing his excuse for not attending the funeral, the excuse he came up with after the invitation, the excuse he’ll deliver to Bruce when he has to call him back. 

He sits on the edge of his bed and slips off his boots. The answering machine announces static, pure and void. He unzips the suit down his back, patiently waiting, and then removes his gloves too. He can detect faint breaths on the other line. Dick peels off his mask last. Bruce suddenly hitches on an intake of breath; Dick pauses, mask balanced between his fingers, for the words to follow. 

Instead the line goes dead. Something in the click of the phone, the robotic  _ No New Messages, _ turns Dick’s stomach icy cold. 

Dick glides his thumb over the smooth material of his shiny black mask. He likes his Nightwing costume, the little thrill it still sends him to be his own man, his own hero, but it can’t compete with the sheer pride he felt first donning that simple domino with the yellow cape. Being Robin had meant the world to him. 

It meant the world to Jason, too, Dick knows. He wonders if he was still wearing that simple domino when Bruce dug him out of the rubble last week. Dick begins to shake. He recognizes the symptoms of panic taking over his body, helpless to stop them. He puts in the effort anyway, reminding himself of the futility of grief and the importance of moving on. He tries to even his breathing and a sob bursts from his throat. 

He hears his own strangled cry like sighting an animal through the scope of a rifle and instantly thinks of his incredible vulnerability, of the open wound making home in his chest. And once the thought is there, he may as well be a child who, upon scraping their knee, slowly realizes their blood it outside their body and trembles after stunned delay. That is to say, once the thought is there, Dick can’t stop the next cry or the quick, shallow breaths that claw for air without taking any in. 

He collapses onto his side in the fetal position. He’s curling deeper and deeper in on himself as if eventually he might turn inside out and hide all this external weakness, tuck in these quivering limbs and wet eyes so the world can’t find the delicate, fleshy, human parts of him and hurt them further. 

He can’t get Jason’s face out from behind his eyes. He’s seared there like a second sight. Jason smiles then, smiles like he did last Dick saw him, and Dick screams. 

He has no memory of falling asleep. He must have lay there like a blister on his bed for hours, just oozing and repulsive, an open sore. It’s night again when his eyes open. He can’t breathe through his nose anymore. Jason is behind his eyes still but Dick doesn’t let him smile now. He puts his suit back on instead. He glues on his mask, fingers barely touching anything, feeling nothing, and heads out the Titan Tower like a ghost in search of another haunt. He slips through his teammates, untouchable, as they hold out their hands only for him to pass through them, leaving them in shivers. 

* * *

The guilt arrives later in gentle waves. This is fortunate because it allows Dick to process his emotions like toes edging into cool waters. Dick cannot afford to go into shock, nor does he have the freedom to drown as much as he craves it sometimes. The days since Jason’s funeral pass by in a state of half-reality. He hasn’t heard from Bruce after that silent voicemail. Initially Dick is grateful for this, sure that the only conversation they could have would be one of mutual accusation and blame. They were shaky before Jason and downright volatile during the new Robin’s reign — but they nonetheless had Jason in common. Now they have nothing.

Dick doesn’t even realize he misses Bruce until he’s on the phone with Alfred and hears Bruce in the background. Dick ends the call earlier than he really wants, but it’s too late; Bruce’s voice is trapped in his ears, calling him home.

Dick follows the urge. He envisions Bruce welcoming his back with open arms. The image is so warm Dick can even sort of quell the anger has thrummed beneath the skin of their interactions for over a year. His homecoming does not pan out so neatly as he hopes. 

For one, Bruce is not at the Manor when Dick arrives. Alfred made a copy of the keys Bruce took from him the day he was fired, and he knows Bruce knows Alfred did that, but it still feels uncomfortable using this mockery of trust, this replacement of something Dick was never supposed to lose. When he steps inside the house, he honestly wishes it felt more nostalgic. But Wayne Manor is like a cardboard cut-out of his childhood. There are no pictures of Dick or Jason, Alfred or Bruce — no stains he can attribute to a youthful memory. It is impersonal in the living room as it is in the ballroom or any number of Brucie Wayne’s public halls. 

Dick should have called ahead and made sure Bruce would be around. Yet that’s not what family does — right? Admittedly, Dick’s knowledge of familial etiquette comes mainly from second-hand experiences with Wally. So Dick adopts the “fake it til ya’ make it” method, thinking perhaps if they act like family, they’ll become one. He wonders, wandering around the many rooms until he finds Alfred, if Wally ever enters his home when it’s empty and feels like he’s breaking and entering. 

Dick sighs in relief when he finally encounters the one other living being at Wayne Manor. Alfred pulls him into a tight embrace that stretches on and on, trying to catching to Dick’s grief and contain it all in the space between their arms. 

Dick cries into Alfred’s slender shoulders, gulping in his sandalwood scent with scrambling, desperate breaths. He knows he blubbers Jason’s name a few times, but it’s more than that. It’s everything Dick has lost, from his parents to Bruce to Robin to Jason. He cries because he’s lonely and angry and scared that Bruce might not always be right after all, and if Bruce can be wrong then Dick can’t be confident he’s doing right either. He cries because he knows he’s not alone in his tragedy yet he clings to loneliness anyway, pushing away friends even as he lectures them on trust and support on the field. He cries because even though Alfred is here for him more than anyone else, he still wishes it was Bruce or his parents holding him together.

Mostly, Dick cries because he can. 

* * *

When Bruce does return, Dick has been sleeping in his old bedroom for three days. It’s the only warm room in the house and even though logically the Manor is vast enough to not warrant freeing up unused space, Dick is grateful that Bruce preserved his little corner. Alfred has kept it dust-free and aired out, so it’s exactly the way Dick last left it in a huff a year ago. The Flying Graysons flyer, the FIFA poster, prints from his favorite martial arts movies, photobooth pictures of him and Koriand’r…

Dick’s life was never simple, but it was simpler. He lifts the corner of a newspaper cut-out taped above his desk, slipping a thumb beneath the thin paper to better examine the one color image nestled among grainy black ink. The Teen Titans grin for their first post-mission photo-op. 

Dick smiles back at them. His eyes well up, as they’ve been doing a lot the past three days, and Dick barely keeps the tears from touching his cheeks. He’s in the privacy of his bedroom yet he has this strange compulsion to save his tears as if he might need them later and they’ll all be gone. 

Dick hopes to meet Bruce in the kitchen or in some other neutral, non-Bat territory. Unfortunately Bruce immediately stows himself away in the cave and Dick doesn’t have the patience to wait him out. 

They hurt each other again and pretend it’s all about Jason even though they both know — or, at least, Dick knows — it’s  _ everything  _ between them. They draw emotional blood and can’t seem to stop reopening the wounds. The blood never clots, just pools and pools until there’s a stream and then a river and then an ocean between them.

This time, though, Dick doesn’t give up and run away. This time, Bruce doesn’t close the door. Some days they help each other heal. Other days, they hit where it hurts. But then they heal again, slowly, stubbornly, bridging the rift. It takes them a while, doesn’t happen in the course of a night or a month or even a year — but they learn to stop picking at the scabs, which helps.

 

Tim also helps. Dick is hesitant initially, but Tim comes like a punctuation mark to a sentence that’s run on too long. His reclamation of Robin takes the weight off Dick’s shoulders to be something he’s not anymore. And Tim soothes Bruce in a way Dick just couldn’t after Jason. And if he’s being honest, being there to bless the passage of the mantle makes the experience a whole lot less painful than when Dick had just run into another him on Gotham streets. Tim respects Dick, appreciates his expertise despite not really needing it unlike Jason. Bruce even starts putting pictures up around the house. It’s a fragile, tentative thing, delicate and exciting as a newborn, but their family has its first heartbeat. 

* * *

 

Bruce and Dick celebrate Jason’s birthday on their own with as much physical distance as they can get between each other. Dick knows it’s wrong, that this is no way to honor a Robin, but the only people Dick knows who knew Jason personally are Alfred and Bruce. Alfred belongs with Bruce on this day, and Bruce — Dick still blames him. He doesn’t think he’ll ever fully forgive Bruce, so it’s best Dick keep away right now. He doesn’t trust himself not to undo all their progress. 

So Jason remains a private ache in Dick’s heart, a lonely memory that rears its head every now and then to wrap its arms around him and hold him back from the rest of the world. Dick celebrates Jason by keeping busy. He doesn’t sleep, just finds petty trouble on the streets and makes mountains out of molehill missions. He imagines Jason by his side by accident a few times. He wonders what kind of man Jason would have become. If he still would’ve smiled with reckless sincerity and radiant light. 

He thinks about Jason’s smile the most. The truth is that Dick knows it’s not just Bruce’s fault. Dick practically wiped his hands clean of the two. He knew Bruce was exploiting Jason, pushing him onto the field too early, and Dick let it happen out of spite. Because Bruce didn’t want Dick’s opinion and Dick maybe wanted them both to suffer for it. To realize Bruce’s mistake the hard way. Because he trusted bruce to never have to learn. He really, really trusted Bruce — and that’s where Dick begins to blame him all over again. 

Even though Dick let it happen. But Dick didn’t know at the time that his job was more than playing bait and doing high-kicks. It was to mollify Bruce, keep him grounded. Human. Remind him of how fragile life is, how careful he has to be to walk his line. And Jason — brave, bold, invincible Jason — wasn’t up for that task. He shouldn’t have had to be at fifteen, young enough to think he’ll live forever and strong enough to fool Bruce. 

Dick collapses thirty-six hours after Jason’s birthday, falls asleep in his shitty Bludhaven apartment to the knowledge he let him die. He wakes up, drool on his face, evening BPD shift alarm blaring. Dick turns it off and blinks blearily at his sun-soaked curtains. He shoves Jason’s smile out of his head and promises to be less angry — to never again let his emotions endanger others. It’s a promise that will guide his future actions, solidify his forever partnership with Bruce, and make him an impeccable leader, a forgiving friend, and a smooth liar. 

His need for control becomes a sort of lifestyle, but Dick fancies it’s half the reason people like him so much. He is a beacon of forgiveness and second chances, always up for a joke at the worst of times. His good moods aren’t interrupted by extreme lows anymore; he keeps himself in check. 

Dick thinks he might actually be a better person because of Jason. Of course, he feels like a real asshole for thinking it. He shouldn’t be able to come out the other side of Jason’s death a happier person. 

“It’s not that you’re happier because Jason is gone,” Dinah once tells him during the Titans’ obligatory biannual therapy session. Dick shifts uncomfortably in the giant cushy chair. He avoids eye contact, which he apologizes for but Dinah assures him it’s about _ his  _ comfort. So Dick looks everywhere but at her. “It’s that you’ve learned to handle your emotional responses better. You said you try not to hold onto anger so you can be there for people, right?”

Dick shrugs because Dinah makes it sound more righteous than it feels. Then he nods, the barest tilt of his chin signaling she’s right.

“Then think of this as your form of atonement.”

“To Jason?”

“Yes.”

Dick observes the tiny dots of suede on the chair’s arm. He shakes his head. “It can’t be. It’s too late for me to make things right with him. He’s not any better for me deciding to be a decent person  _ now.” _

He hears Dinah set her pencil down on her notepad. His eyes shift towards her feet in almost recognition of her. 

“Sometimes,” she says softly, “it’s enough to be better  _ for  _ a person, regardless of if they know you are.”

Dick’s eyes shut and he breathes in deeply. He thinks, _it’s going to have to be enough, isn’t it?_ and then exhales, pushing the thought out from his body. He lets it fill the room so later he can close the door and leave Jason behind for the day.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, guys! If you like this, please do reblog it on tumblr [here!](http://somebratinamask.tumblr.com/post/183179787776/jaydick-flashfic-atonement-vitality-begun) It would mean the world to me <3


End file.
